


If The Morning Light Ever Calls You Backwards

by mammothluv



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mammothluv/pseuds/mammothluv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castle says he's fine. Beckett knows better.  A post-ep for "Linchpin."</p>
            </blockquote>





	If The Morning Light Ever Calls You Backwards

**Author's Note:**

> _Castle_ belongs to ABC and the the show's creators. Title comes from the song “Bottom of the Sea” by Matt Nathanson. I'm not making any profit and no copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> This was written for lone_lilly, my partner in all Castle related crimes, who kindly bid on me in the fandom_helps auction for Planned Parenthood. Many thanks to lytab5 who continues to be an absolutely awesome beta.

Four years in, Kate Beckett knows Richard Castle’s tells. 

Castle is calm at the precinct as they talk to Danberg, assures her he’s fine when he turns down her offer of drinks and says he’d rather head home. But she takes note of the slump of his shoulders, the smile that doesn’t come as easily as it normally does. 

She also knows he doesn’t deal with things the way she does, doesn’t prefer to retreat and tend to his wounds himself. He needs to talk things out. Kate suspects he usually does so with Martha or even Alexis now that she’s older. But she’s aware there are things he tries to shield them from and, even if he wanted to discuss this particular case and it’s aftereffects with either of them, Danberg has made it clear the details remain classified. 

It’s because of this knowledge that, even though she’s exhausted and wants nothing more than to be home in comfortable silence, she’s at his door with a bottle of wine clutched in her hand. She pauses, fist just an inch from the door, remembers Martha and Alexis will likely be asleep. Castle won’t. He’ll be restless. She feels some small fraction of it jumping in her own muscles now. Her feet tap an inconsistent rhythm on the hardwood floor of his hallway as her free hand digs in her pocket for her cell phone.

He picks up on the first ring. She doesn’t wait for him to speak before she says, “I’m at your door.” 

Several long moments later there’s the rattling of the lock and deadbolt and then he’s in front of her, eyes tired but not with sleep. It’s a weariness that seems out of place on him. This is what pulled her here, despite her own reeling head. Whatever her reservations about where their relationship stands, whatever Sophia may have done to her head, Rick’s had more punches by far. 

She holds up the bottle of wine by way of explanation. His expression remains neutral, not the usual enthusiastic welcome she gets when showing up at his door. But he backs up, leaving a space just wide enough for her to walk past him and into his apartment. 

He wanders to the couch while she makes her way to the kitchen, finds two wine glasses and pours. When she returns to the living room, she hesitates briefly in front of a chair before crossing in front of his slumped form and settling next to him on the couch. He takes the glass she hands him but doesn’t take a drink before setting it down on the table in front of them.

She watches his fists clench and unclench, lets her gaze travel to the tense line of his jaw, longs to see it soften into a smile or a laugh. She can envision the familiar creases that form around his eyes when he grins at her but there’s no trace of them now. 

His refusal to meet her eyes, instead studying the untouched wine glass in front of him, is disconcerting in a way she can’t quite pinpoint but suspects has something to do with the way she’s become accustomed to glancing up from her desk or the whiteboard to find his level gaze focused solely on her.

“If you want something stronger,” she offers.

“No.” His voice is rough, tone firm. Kate hasn’t missed the fact that he already smells of scotch. 

She settles against the back of the couch, slipping her shoes off and tucking her feet under her. She sips her own wine and waits. He’ll find words. He always does. She won’t cheat him out of the time to form them. 

It takes longer than she expects. As she watches him, she tries not to recall the sharp, metallic sting of panic rising in her throat as she looked at Sophia’s gun against his temple, tries not to hear the shout that pushed all the breath from her lungs, vision blurring and time bending just enough that, when the shot rang out, she was certain it was him she’d see fall to the ground. 

The next time she returns to the kitchen to refill her wine, she brings the bottle with her. She’s pouring her third glass when he finally speaks. 

“Sophia was right about one thing.” His voice catches on her name. “I am selfish. She was always... I had to fill in the blanks with her. And I liked that. It was arrogant of me to think she was who I imagined.”

“She fooled a lot of people.” It’s an assurance that wouldn’t mean much to her in his place. She almost winces as she says it, mind reeling to find something more meaningful and failing.

“I don’t want to do this,” he says. “Talk about her.”

“Don’t have to,” Kate replies. In truth there are dozens of questions about Sophia and his feelings for her, both past and present, wanting to explode off her tongue but she keeps them in. She doesn’t have a right to them, just as she didn’t have a right to the jealousy she’s subjected him to over the past few days. He doesn’t owe her explanations. She doesn’t need them. 

What she needs is some way to pull him back. He’s lost in it, she can tell by the way his eyes focus anywhere but on her, his uneven breath that seems too loud in the silence between them. She knows because he stayed there with Sophia’s body until she came back for him. She can still feel the way he started, muscles tensing under the press of her fingertips, when she grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him up off his knees, away from Sophia’s body. 

When the right words continue to elude her, she settles for taking his hand in hers, letting both of their hands rest on his thigh. It’s a physical attempt to anchor him here, to her, not to Sophia or some hypothetical father he’s never met with an agenda he can’t understand. It’s not enough, she thinks. If their roles were reversed he’d say something that would make her laugh even if she didn’t think it possible, begin to tilt her world back in the right direction. But this, this is something too. She knows because he turns his head and his eyes meet hers briefly before they settle on their intertwined fingers. 

“I am sorry.” The words come out of him in a near whisper.

“You don’t need to apologize. You don’t have to talk to me.”

“No, I’m sorry for...” He throws his free hand, the one that isn’t clutched in hers, up in a gesture of confusion. His obvious defeat clutches at her, renews her desperation to fix this. “I’m sorry for being the guy who puts you in these situations. I trusted Sophia and it nearly got us both killed.” After a pause, he adds, “multiple times.”

“You’re not responsible for that. It’s a dangerous job, Castle.” 

“Your job is dangerous, Beckett.” His voice is loud and strong on the word your, singling her out. “Your job. You’re a cop. I’m... a distraction.” His fingers toy with the seam of the couch, his voice laced with a guilt out of proportion to the week’s events. It’s thick in the air between them and she doesn’t know how to bridge it.

“You are not a distraction.” The ferocity of her response startles even her. She hopes he'll be able to discern that it's fueled by her need for him to understand his importance. “You are my partner. You can’t blame yourself for,” she pauses, Sophia’s name on her lips, “other people’s actions. Besides, where would I be without you? If we accept your calculations, you’re far ahead on the life saving count after this week.” She’s trying to keep it light in hopes he’ll jump in and defend his numbers like he did the first time he brought it up. Instead his shoulders tense in response to her words.

None of this is helping. 

She takes a chance, says her next words quietly. They fall from her lips before she has quite prepared herself for what will have to come next. “There’s one save you don’t know about.” 

His eyes flicker to hers for a second in question, she doesn’t know if it’s in response to her words or the change in her tone. There’s nothing to do now but to explain. 

“I started When it Comes to Slaughter a week before my mother was murdered. Weeks later when the funeral was long over, when the police had stopped giving us daily updates and started giving us excuses, when all the rituals of death were done, there were just...” she pauses, takes a slow steadying breath, “pieces. Nothing fit. I felt like I’d been cut loose. And one night I picked up your book again. I wanted it to be a thread, something that could connect me to that girl I was a month before, that girl who thought the biggest problem in the world was how to pass her Medieval Literature final when she’d been skipping the class all month and had neglected to read past the first five pages of The Decameron.”

On a normal day, he’d raise his eyebrows, ask suggestively just what it was she’d been skipping all those classes for or give an exaggerated shudder and assure her that no one makes it past the first five pages of The Decameron. Now all he says is, “But it wasn’t.”

“No,” she agrees. “But, your book, it was something that made sense in a way my mother’s murder didn’t. It was... Olson and Ruiz were dedicated. They cared about the victims in a way the cops in my mother’s case didn’t. They were willing to think outside the box, to do anything to bring the victims justice.”

His grip tightens on her hand, urging her on. 

“I went out that weekend and bought every one of your books I could find. You wrote heroes who didn’t give up, didn’t take the easy way out. And something about reading them... It got me through, Castle. A few years later, when I graduated Stanford and started the Academy, I knew that was the kind of cop I wanted to be.” 

He’s still for a moment, the apartment silent around them. And then, “Are you suggesting I read one of my own books right now?” 

She laughs. It’s relief mostly because he’s not laughing, not even smiling but his gaze is direct and there’s a hint of teasing in his tone. Head tilted to the side, he regards her carefully, thoughtfully, something like wonder in his eyes. His fingers, still intertwined with hers, move to brush against her palm. Their contact isn’t commonplace enough for her to be unaffected. His skin rough against her own causes her breath to hitch. 

“What I’m saying is, you help me do that. You are that kind of investigator and you help me be that kind of cop. We saved a little girl’s life today. If not for your, we'll call it stubborn determination, she might not be alive right now.” 

“You were that kind of cop even before I came along,” he says, but there’s no defeat in the statement, simply the strength of his belief. “It’s one of the reasons you inspire me.”

“Yeah, but I’m better at it when you’re around.” She leans over just enough that she can nudge his shoulder with her own. “That’s what partnership is all about.” She takes a breath, revels in their returning equilibrium. “Speaking of, Castle, what Sophia said about your dad. If you want to know for sure, we’ll figure it out together.” 

“Someday. Maybe. I need a break from the CIA for the moment. But I do appreciate the offer, partner,” he adds, emphasis on the final word. 

She shifts slightly and the movement reminds her just how close they are. She can feel his breath against her face; it’s steady now. She bites her lip, holds his gaze, weighs options she doesn’t often allow herself to acknowledge. 

He breaks the moment before she comes to a decision. “I’m exhausted,” he says, head rolling back to rest on the back of the couch, creating some distance between them.

“Me too.” She leans back as well, mirroring his position. “Saving the world, you know,” she says with an intentional casual air.

He chuckles, not his usual full-bodied, deep laugh, but obvious amusement nonetheless and she knows then she won’t leave unless he asks her to.

He doesn’t. 

“I’ve been DVRing the new season of Kitchen Wars,” he offers.

“Oh, fine,” she replies putting a slight edge of exasperation in her voice even though she knows he’ll see through to her relief that he’s asking her to stay. Now that the tension that's been thrumming through her body is beginning to dissipate, her stomach is reminding her it’s far past dinner time. “Is there anywhere that delivers pizza at...” she glances at her father’s watch, “four in the morning?”

“Kate Beckett, you know full well that one of the things that makes this the finest city in the world is that someone is always delivering pizza. That said, there’s leftover Chinese in the fridge. Much quicker.” 

She springs off the couch before he can finish his sentence, can feel the heat of his hand on her own even after she's let go. “I’ll get the food. You start the show.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” he replies. The doubts aren't gone; she knows that. But the two of them are slipping into something familiar and different all at once. It feels like progress. 

When she returns to the living room with three cartons of leftovers and two forks, the contestants on screen are already trash talking one another, interspersed with shots of them preparing ridiculously complicated dishes. Kate settles into the spot she just vacated and his shoulder is warm against her own as they dig their forks into the cartons and focus on the high culinary drama unfolding on the screen. 

“And, Castle,” she says after a few bites of fried rice. “If you tell anyone what I just told you about your books.”

“Yes, Beckett, this is the part where you threaten me with bodily harm if I let on that you actually enjoy me or my writing. I know the script.”

When all she does is fix him with a glare, he adds, “Your secret is safe with me.” He returns his attention to the screen. “Now shut up. This is my favorite part.”

“You’ve already seen this? You’re rewatching an episode of Kitchen Wars?” she asks, emphasis on the show’s name, incredulous.

“Shh. Shh. Look,” he urges, eagerly pointing at the screen where one of the younger contestants is hurling an uncooked chicken breast at one of his competitors. 

She clamps her mouth shut, refusing to laugh

“I had to start you at beginning, so you’d understand the nuance of the competition.”

“The nuance?” she repeats, rolling her eyes in the direction of the screen. “I can actually feel my brain cells dying off.”

“I know. Isn’t it great?” 

His genuine excitement is almost enough to justify the two subsequent episodes she allows him to talk her into. She changes that almost to definitely when, before they can start a fourth episode, he falls asleep, his head coming to rest comfortably on her shoulder.


End file.
